"The major new feature of the company's new iOS 6 mobile operating system is a new mapping module developed by Apple itself - a replacement for the Google-supplied maps that have been standard on the iPhone since it debuted in 2007. It is a change borne not of user demand, but of corporate politics: Google's Android platform is the biggest competitive threat to the iPhone, so Apple is cutting ties with Google. iPhone owners might have loved Google Maps, but Apple has no love for Google. Unfortunately, Apple's new maps are simply not as good as Google's." That's putting it mildly - my own town barely even exists on Apple's maps. It's basically a trainwreck, and according to The Verge, Apple has been working on this for the past five years. This is what happens when a company cares more about stupid grudges than its customers. Considering how much effort it has taken Google to get where it is now with maps, don't expect Apple's maps to even get near Google Maps any times soon. This isn't going to take months - this is going to take several years, if at all.

Oh boy, your comment contains so much spin it would take several pages of facts to debunk fully, so I'll try to condense the most important points.

The Apple - Google maps divorce is, I suspect, a mutually agreed separation ... and neither seem to want to continue with the relationship.

How did you determine that? Oh right, you simply invented it. Fact: Google plans to publish their own iOS6 maps app, so it seems extremely unlikely they would willingly surrender the prime spot they had in iOS so far.

When iOS and the iPhone was first conceived Apple felt so confident about being dependent on Google for some core services such as Maps ... But then Google redesigned Android to directly compete with iOS and effectively launched a competitive attack on Apple's new flagship product.

So it is about a business grudge, at least partially.

Worse was to follow as Google began introducing Map features such as turn-by-turn navigation to the Android version of it's mobile mapping offering but not to it's iOS version.

Just a few lines before you claimed Apple designed the app and now you say that Google blocked the feature to appear in an app that wasn't designed by them? Are you familiar with the term "internally inconsistent"?

Clearly Apple could not continue to be dependent on Google for its core mapping function with the threat of that function slowly degrading in comparison with the Android mapping function and the possibility of Google pulling the plug on it's iOS maps at some point in the future...

As was pointed out by other commenters, the lacking features were (perhaps entirely) due to Apple's unwillingness to implement them in their own Maps app (which only interfaces with Google for the raw data). Without any more data on the topic I am forced to conclude that Apple had at least a hand in the lack of features and it cannot be blamed entirely (if at all) on Google.

It's also no surprise that it's initial offering is in some areas weaker than Google's, mapping data gets better primarily through usage and not through design and it will take a while for Apple to accumulate the sort of usage data that Google already has.

Trying such experiments on your customer base who expect the new product to be better, not worse, is a recipe for disaster. Nevertheless, how the situation will develop remains to be seen. I don't think Thom's conclusion "This isn't going to take months - this is going to take several years, if at all." has so far enough evidence to support it.

Google almost certainly wants to insert ads into mapping (something Apple won't accept on an Apple made bundled app but would probably accept on a stand alone Google maps app) because Google has to insert more ads in more places in all its offerings because it's revenue per click has been declining so drastically in recent quarters.

Pure unsupported conjecture. I've yet to see Google insert ads into any maps at all, so if you have data points which support this "almost certain" assertion, show them.

In addition the way Apple has implemented the mapping feature is as a core OS service which can be used by developers to develop all sorts of new and interesting mapping apps and services. It's via third party apps that Apple wants transit info to be available on it's maps for example but it hopes for all sorts of new mapping initiatives from its large developer community. This is something that was impossible using the old closed Google mapping system where Google jealousy guarded core mapping functions and location data because such data is fundemental to Google's business model whilst it is peripheral to Apple's. So in a lovely ironic turn Apple has opened mapping on iOS compared to Google's closed approached.

Again, the app and its interfaces were developed by Apple, not Google, so it was Apple's fault for not making it embeddable as reusable components. I'm almost certain Google would very much welcome this kind of feature, because it is already offered on their web-based Google maps (you can embed maps and subsets of its functionality in websites).

It will be interesting to see whether Google offers it's own mapping app for iOS, if they want all that valuable data from iOS usage then they need to do something.

Fact: Google plans to publish their own iOS6 maps app, so it seems extremely unlikely they would willingly surrender the prime spot they had in iOS so far.

That's a rumor. Google and apple have said nothing - see my other post on this matter

So it is about a business grudge, at least partially.

Please try to think like a grown up - using words like grudge is just silly because it implies that reducing dependency on your main competitor for a core aspect of your product is somehow emotional rather than obvious good business sense. I repeat - how would you feel if Apple controlled the mapping service on the Android platform?

Again, the app and its interfaces were developed by Apple, not Google, so it was Apple's fault for not making it embeddable as reusable components. I'm almost certain Google would very much welcome this kind of feature, because it is already offered on their web-based Google maps (you can embed maps and subsets of its functionality in websites).

Apple were not free to use Google map data as they wished any more than anyone else is, everybody is restrained by Google's terms and Google had monopoly on mobile maps. In the last week that monopoly was broken. I thought people didn't like monopolies on this forum or did I get that wrong?

That's a rumor. On another site (the Loop) which has a 100% record of verifying the authenticity of Apple related rumors they are saying that rumor is false. Personally I hope Google do make their own mapping app because I support competition against monopoly.